India Gate
All India War Memorial
Lutyens's 42-metre memorial arch at the end of the ceremonial axis, inscribed with some 13,000 names.
Edwin Lutyens designed the arch as the terminus of his great east–west axis, and it works exactly as intended: from a distance it is a clean shape against the sky, and up close it is a wall of names. Around 13,000 of the Indian and British soldiers who died in the First World War and the Third Anglo-Afghan War are carved into its faces — regiment by regiment, rank by rank, in a typography meant to be read slowly.
The setting has changed more than the monument. The empty canopy behind it once held a statue of George V, removed in 1968 and left pointedly vacant for half a century before a statue of Subhas Chandra Bose was installed in 2022. The flame that burned beneath the arch from 1972 was merged into the National War Memorial nearby in 2021. What remains constant is the lawn: in the evening the whole city seems to walk here, and the arch becomes furniture for an enormous public living room.
- 01The inscribed namesRead the panels rather than photographing the arch — the memorial's whole argument is in the lettering.
- 02The axisLook west down Kartavya Path to Rashtrapati Bhavan; the road was surveyed as a single sightline.
- 03Evening crowdsAfter sunset the lawns fill with families, ice-cream carts and cricket — the least solemn war memorial anywhere.
Open at all hours and free. Parking is far from the arch by design; approach on foot from the C-Hexagon side.